7 Shades of Meaning

Epoch 1 was gray. Epoch 2 is color. Color dawned in Digital Light soon after Gordon Moore stated his famous "Law" in 1965, the event that kicked off Epoch 2. It was no coincidence. Every color pixel display (and there are very many) is a flag flying in celebration—not only of that event but also of computer history's Epoch 2 and the explosive Amplification it brought us. Pixels acquired color in the psychedelic Sixties—in the very year, 1967, of the Summer of Love and the Human Be-In. But that was just coincidence. Digital color wasn't a countercultural achievement. It resulted from the mainstream rush to the Moon—or away from Earth, depending on how you look at it. I didn't discover the full story until I wrote this chapter.1